g!

"No other hymn
I'd choose, nor gentler requiem dear
Than Tweed's, that through death's twilight dim,
Mourned in the latest Minstrel's ear."

Lockhart's description of Sir Walter's death-scene, so touching in its
very simplicity, has never been matched in literary biography. From the
first years of his life, Scott was wedded to the Tweed. It was his
ancestral stream. And it stood for all that was best and fairest in
Border story. It was by the Tweed that he won his greatest triumphs, and
faced his greatest defeats, where he spent the happiest as well as the
most strenuous period of his career. So that, to breathe his last breath
by its pleasant banks--a desire oft repeated--was as natural as it was
keen and eager. We know how at length he was borne back to Abbotsford,
the house of his dreams, and how on one of those ideal days during the
early autumn that crowning wish was realised; "It was a beautiful day,
so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still that the
sound of all others most delicious to his ear--the gentle ripple of the
Tweed over its pebbles--was distinctly audible as we knelt around the
bed and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes."

Of course, it is owing, in great measure, to Scott that the Tweed has so
exalted a place in literature. To speak of the Tweed at once recalls
Scott and all that the Tweed meant to him. Both in a sense are names
inseparable and synonymous. It is almost entirely for Scott's sake that
Tweedside has become one of the world-Meccas. What Scott did for the
Tweed--the Border--renders it (to speak reverently) holy ground for
ever. Hence the affection with which the world looks on Scott--as a
patriot,--as one who has helped to create his country, and as a great
literary magnet attracting thousands to it, and as the medium of some of
the most pleasurable of mental experiences. Of the great names on
Scotland's roll of honour, Scott, even more than all of them (even more
than Burns), has wedded his country to the very best of humankind
everywhere. But do not let us forget that Tweed had its lovers many
before Scott's day. Burns's pilgrimage to the Border was a picturesque
episode in his poetic history. "Yarrow and Tweed to monie a tune owre
Scotland rings," he wrote, and other lines represent a warm admiration
for the district. Tweed was a "wimpling stately" stream, and there were
"Eden scenes on crystal Jed" scarcely less fascinating. J